Thursday, 28 November 2013

I was asked recently when was the last time I played in
public. Well, I think it was in 1984 or 1985.

An office band at Lintas Sydney was formed for a party and I
was asked to sit in on bass guitar. Since I was the Chairman/CEO at the time
and my past as a rock musician was not generally known, I asked that my
participation was kept secret until the performance. In the event, it was not
that I played well that surprised (I didn’t), but that I played at all.

Sad to say, I don’t remember who all the band-members were.
I think creative director Al Crew was there. And Tracey Harbutt (now Tilda
Bostwick) sang with great élan.
But at the heart of it all was a bright young copywriter, Dugald McDonald.

Now, nearly three decades later, Doogie’s new CD has lobbed
in from Africa: Big Steel Bird. It’s a total delight. He wrote all the songs,
plays guitar and sings.

Saturday, 23 November 2013

I’m going this week to work with a multinational company in
the Netherlands and a major part of what we’ll be doing is to work
collaboratively to develop a set of shared corporate values and behaviours.

The current meltdown at the Cooperative Bank in Britain,
culminating in the resigned chairman apparently involved in sex, drugs and
expenses scandals, reminds us that ethical behaviour starts and ends with the
individual. We can’t simply transfer it wishfully to institutions.

Taking the moral high ground ‒ being holier than thou ‒ is not an easy position to sustain.

“The cooperative bank: good with money”. Apparently not (in
either meaning).

Wednesday, 20 November 2013

Bryce was a rock for me before he became Australia’s
best-selling author of all time. He as partner and creative director at his own
agency in Sydney, me as chairman of Lintas there. We lunched together
regularly. While in public he could roar, in private he was a source of great
kindness, calm and wisdom.

When I was coming back to live and work in London, he gently
mocked my attempts to express my love of Australia at my leaving party. I only
saw him once after that. And by then he had become the famous writer ‒ of his first
best-seller, The Power of One. He told me that he had sold the film rights in
New York for “a million dollars”.

I asked him how he had got started as a real writer (as
opposed to a copywriter), and he told me that he had been out with some mates one
evening and mentioned the novel he’d been thinking about. “Bryce, I’m sick to
death of hearing about this book,” responded one of his friends. “Just shut up
and write it.”

“So what did you do?” I asked him.

“I went home, got out a sheet of paper, and started.”

It’s one of the most simple and vibrant openings in
literature: “This is what happened... ”

Sunday, 17 November 2013

Where would be the most important source for innovation in
the world? London, Paris, New York? Birmingham, Cambridge, Los Angeles? Silicon
Valley?

Well, historically, none of the above. The answer is New
Jersey. Surprising?

Not if one considers the extraordinary stream of
life-changing inventions that have flowed from that state.

From Thomas Edison and his teams at Menlo Park came not only
the two-way telegraph, the phonograph, electric lighting (not just the light
bulb, but all the rest of the necessary paraphernalia), the movie camera, the
microphone, batteries for electrically-driven vehicles, but also the first
innovation teams, the systematic notion that Big Ideas had to be followed up with rigorous
development work, the ability to fund and market breakthrough products
successfully and the establishment of celebrity status for inventors.

Also based in New Jersey (after his move from Washington DC)
was the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, and his successors at
Bell Laboratories, who between them are credited with the invention of radio
astronomy, the transistor, the laser and several programming languages and
operating systems. Together they have won seven Nobel prizes.

Then there’s the Italian inventor of wireless telegraphy and
the radio, Guglielmo Marconi, who established one of his pioneering radio stations
at New Brunswick NJ.

But perhaps the earliest important innovator to work in the
state was Alfred Vail, who, with Samuel Morse, is credited with the development
and commercialisation of the telegraph in the late 1830s.

Thursday, 14 November 2013

Over the last century good Australian tenors have been something
like hen’s teeth. So first to hear Stuart Skelton as Peter Grimes, and then
just a couple of weeks later Dominic Walsh in Schubert’s great song cycle, Winterreise,
has been a double treat.

I was lucky enough to catch the young Mr Walsh in a private
run-through at the Peckham home of his accompanist, the fine Schubertian
pianist (and another Australian), Geoffrey Saba. Dominic Walsh was an
Australian Music Foundation award-winner in 2012 and Geoffrey Saba has been
mentoring him. We the privileged audience numbered just five.

Walsh and Saba are taking this saddest of sad works of lost
love to Australia, with Saba then going on to Indonesia, so if you want to catch it, this is where they
will be:

Monday, 11 November 2013

When I was at school in the 1950s and early 1960s, it seemed
to be generally accepted that Sir Laurence Olivier was, alongside Sir Ralph
Richardson and Sir John Gielgud, the greatest of a great generation of
“classical” actors.

Problem was, even at thirteen or so, he seemed to me to be a
tremendous ham. On film both his Henry V and his Richard III appeared over the
top (but just about tolerable), and his Hamlet reduced me to uncontrollable fits of giggles,
so inflated was his assumption of the role.

He seemed to spend his time in so many roles gurning, unable to speak without
addressing the throng in stentorian tones, both loud and soft.

Now, over fifty years later, his work remains for me
completely unwatchable. Thank goodness for the Method, which has enabled actors
to be (and not to be), rather than just pretending to be.

Tuesday, 5 November 2013

Reflecting on the 50th anniversary celebrations of the National Theatre in London, it's not hard for me to find the reason that I've been in the audience so rarely.

It's a brutalist barn. Completely lacking a sense of intimacy. Even at the finest productions of the greatest plays, we might just as well be in a conference centre.

So much better at the Old Vic, its temporary home in the 1960s before the barn was built. What wonderful memories I have of plays there. Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney, Anthony Hopkins, Geraldine McEwan… But perhaps most of all John Stride and Edward Petherbridge in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. What a company.

And how brilliant of Kevin Spacey to realise this and go some way to re-creating those halcyon days there.

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Welcome

When I started this blog, the posts were mainly about innovation, creativity and leadership matters. So if you want the see those, they are mostly in the earlier years. More recently I've been writing about the arts - music, literature and art itself. I still post from time to time on innovation matters and indeed anything else that intrigues me.

About Me

Roger Neill FRSA, FIoD, is Managing Partner of the innovation consultancy, Per Diem. He was Founding Director of the Centre for Creativity, City University London, and international managing partner for Synectics Corporation, a world leader in innovation and creativity. He writes, speaks and conducts masterclasses and workshops around the world.
Previously Roger worked in marketing communications. For ten years he was with Saatchi & Saatchi and was appointed to the board of directors aged 27. With Lintas (now Lowe) he became chairman in Australia/New Zealand and regional director for Asia/Pacific. He was deputy chairman of WCRS Worldwide in London. Roger was World President of the International Advertising Association 1990-1992.
An expert on the innovators, artists, writers and musicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he helped Sam Wanamaker to re-build Shakespeare's Globe in London. He curated the exhibition Legends: The Art of Walter Barnett for the National Portrait Gallery in Australia. Roger was founder of Sinfonia 21 and chairman of Endymion Ensemble. He started his working life as a professional rock musician.